- An Australian artist's latest masterpiece is a McDonald's pickle stuck to a ceiling — and he wants $6,200 for it.
- The work, simply titled "Pickle," gets at the question of how people attribute value and meaning to things, the gallery director said.
One man's discarded McDonald's pickle is another man's $6,200 work of art.
At least that's what's happening at one art gallery in New Zealand.
The Michael Lett Gallery in Auckland is hosting an exhibition from the Fine Arts, Sydney, gallery. One of the pieces in the exhibition comes from Australian artist Matthew Griffin and is likely something you've seen before.
The work is a pickle slice that's been taken from a McDonald's cheeseburger and flung onto the ceiling of the Michael Lett Gallery. The pickle is sticking to the ceiling with nothing other than the cheeseburger's sauce. Simply called "Pickle," the so-called sculpture is going for 10,000 New Zealand dollars, or roughly 6,280 US dollars.
The exhibition will be on show until Saturday.
Ryan Moore, the director of Fine Arts, Sydney, says he understands the reactions to Griffin's piece.
"A humorous response to the work is not invalid – it's OK, because it is funny," he told The Guardian.
"Pickle" raises questions of how people decide on something's meaning and value, he continued.
"Generally speaking, artists aren't the ones deciding whether something is art is not – they are the ones who make and do things. Whether something is valuable and meaningful as artwork is the way that we collectively, as a society choose to use it or talk about it," he said to The Guardian.
Whoever buys "Pickle" will receive instructions on how to recreate the work in their own space, but on top of their thousands of dollars, they'll have to pay an additional fee for a second McDonald's burger from which to get the replica pickle.
Another famous entry in the food-stuck-to-wall-as-art category came a few years ago when Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan duct-taped bananas to walls and sold them for $120,000 apiece.